Russian publication Kommersant gained access to a document laying out plans for Russia to defend its economy against the wave of sanctions levied against it since its invasion of Ukraine took place. Section 6.8.3 says Russia might import foreign goods without consent from copyright holders among those companies.
According to a since-deleted tweet from Gazeta.ru, Russian politician Dmitry Ionin suggested unblocking popular BitTorrent tracker RuTracker. Russians would likely use it (regardless of the ban) to download movies from companies like Disney, Sony, and Warner Bros. that have paused new releases in Russia. However, pirating software might have limited effectiveness in today’s world of software-as-a-service. Even if Russians can download programs, they can no longer register or pay for subscriptions, especially since Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal suspended operations in Russia as well. And a growing number of software and services these days run on the cloud, so they can’t be downloaded in the first place.
